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Field
Abstract
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Before
Compulsory internships become an essential part of many school and university curricula, withdrawing the students from education for weeks and months. It is expected that internships can support the occupational choice and establish important networks to the employer. Internship experiences are de-facto established as an important screening tool in the labor market, signaling to the employer the quality and experience of a candidate. At the same time, the labor market literature on the effects of internships is almost non-existent. If internships have no beneficial impacts on labor market outcomes, and what we so-far observe is driven by self-selection of very motivated students, than keeping students out of school/ university could even have negative impacts on labor market outcomes. In collaboration with UNICEF Montenegro and Giant's Shoulder, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labor we evaluate a program that investigates the effects of a unique labor market pilot initiative called ``Prilike''. Within the scope of the ``Prilike'' project, UNICEF and Giant's Shoulder have established a cooperation with over 60 companies, amongst others with Microsoft, Siemens, Inditex, Ernst & Young, and KPMG. To evaluate whether the experience of going to these companies changes expectations about the labor market hiring process and expected wages, as well as ambitions to work in the private sector, we set-up a randomized-control trail. From the pool of all schools in Montenegro, we randomly select eight schools using administrative data to ensure balance between treatment and control schools. Using then individual-level administrative data and a survey responses for 4,003 students from the 11th and 12th grade (2 final years in secondary education), we further randomize students into one-day internships. The project has raised great interest in the agencies and the rich baseline data allows to set-up further evaluations. While the first survey endline will be conducted in December 2016 (shortly after the internships), long-term outcomes can be easily evaluated given the link to administrative data.
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After
Firm visit experiences are de-facto established as an important screening tool in the labor market, signaling to the employer the quality and experience of a candidate. Compulsory firm visits (mostly as internships) become an essential part of many school and university curricula, withdrawing the students from education for weeks and months. It is expected that firm visits can support the occupational choice and establish important networks to the employer. At the same time, the labor market literature on the effects of firm visits is almost non-existent. If firm visits have no beneficial impacts on labor market outcomes, and what we so-far observe is driven by self-selection of very motivated students, then keeping students out of school/ university could even have negative impacts on labor market outcomes. In collaboration with UNICEF Montenegro and Giant's Shoulder, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labor we evaluate a program that investigates the effects of a unique labor market pilot initiative called ``Prilike''. Within the scope of the ``Prilike'' project, UNICEF and Giant's Shoulder have established a cooperation with over 50 companies, amongst others with Microsoft, Siemens, Inditex, Ernst \& Young, and KPMG. To evaluate whether the experience of going to these companies changes expectations about the labor market hiring process and expected wages, as well as ambitions to work in the private sector, we set-up a randomized-control trial. From the pool of all schools in Montenegro, we randomly select eight schools to the program. Following, using then individual-level administrative data and a survey responses for students from the 11th and 12th grade, we randomly match a randomly selected group of students to the companies. Overall, we find that the program has made the students' labor market expectations more realistic, optimistic and changed the students' locus of control.
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